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Profiles

Browse this section for short profiles of some of the thousands of Jewish women found throughout jwa.org. We will be adding new profiles to this section regularly and welcome your suggestions for women to add.

Highly unusual for her time, Sara Landau not only made a name for herself as a respected economist, but paired her scholarship with inexhaustible volunteerism both in her community and through national organizations.

Ann Landers counseled millions of readers through her popular advice column for over forty years on issues from the growing pains of adolescence to the grief of widowhood with wit, humor, kindness, and good sense.

After a car accident left Rabbi Lynne Landsberg struggling with a traumatic brain injury, she devoted her career to ensuring that Jews with disabilities have full access to the richness of Jewish life.

A disciplined administrator who put her own safety at risk time and again for others, Rae Landy helped Hadassah establish the first nursing service in Israel and then served as a military nurse in the US Armed Services.

Pearl Lang was the first dancer Martha Graham allowed to perform some of her roles, and brought elements of the ecstatic poetry and dance of Hasidic and Sephardic Jewish traditions to her own critically praised work as a dancer and choreographer.

Though her work was largely uncredited and behind the scenes, Lucy Fox Robins Lang contributed greatly to both the labor movement and the anarchist movement as aide and confidante to major figures like Emma Goldman and Samuel Gompers.

Sherry Lee Heiman Lansing broke barriers as the first woman studio executive when she became head of 20th Century Fox in 1980, going on to lead Paramount Studios to create wildly successful blockbusters like Forrest Gump, Braveheart, and Titanic.

Ruth Meckler Laredo’s astonishing piano performances caused one New York Times reporter to write, “Her hands sometimes appear to hover over the keys, a blur to the eyes if not the ears…But what hummingbird ever packed such power?“

The first woman composer to earn a degree from the University of Michigan, Elaine Friedman Lebenbom responded to sexism and anti-Semitism by composing works that celebrated Jewish themes and women’s experiences.

Known as much for her signature men’s jackets, cowboy boots, and tortoiseshell glasses as for her stunning (and often scathing) social commentary, Fran Lebowitz has spent a lifetime critiquing cultural norms.